Snatched (48 page)

‘I’m sorry,’ Sue said again, sure that he was just lashing out about this because of grief.

‘Be at the door,’ Dave snarled. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’

‘Don’t you think you should come and say goodbye to your dad?’ Sue asked. But Dave had already disconnected the call.

26

Unaware that Dave was speeding their way with a terrified Sue in the passenger seat of his car, Jay climbed out of the squad car when Ann pulled up at the front of the house. A second car turned into the driveway a few seconds later, carrying the three extra uniforms she had requested – just in case something turned up and she needed the scene to be secured for evidence.

Ann was convinced that the ‘things’ Jack Miller had alluded to would probably turn out to be drugs, and she couldn’t wait to get stuck in. But Jay just wanted to do a quick search before Sue and Dave came home, because she didn’t want to cause any more distress than was absolutely necessary under the circumstances.

‘Bloody hell,’ one of the PCs complained, walking down the side of the house and shining a powerful torch-beam on the garden. ‘It’s going to be murder getting through this lot.’

‘There’s a bit of a path over here,’ Ann said, pointing towards the trodden-down section she’d just spotted when he’d lit up that area.

Going over to it, Jay was just about to set off to look for the shed when Dave’s headlights arced through the darkness as he roared up the drive and screeched to a stop behind the second squad car.

Jumping out, Dave rushed towards them, yelling, ‘Get the fuck off my property!’

‘We’ve had permission,’ Jay informed him calmly, glad that the extra PCs were male, because Dave Miller looked like he’d be difficult to contain if he exploded.

‘Not from me, you haven’t,’ Dave said sharply. ‘And it’s my house, so unless you’ve got a warrant, you’d best get the fuck out!’

Running up to him, Sue clutched at his arm. He’d been too angry to speak when he’d picked her up outside the hospital, and he’d driven here like a madman. But she was sure it was just the pain of losing his father that was causing him to lash out. And guilt, for not having been there when he’d died.

‘Just let them take a look,’ she said now. ‘They’ll only be a minute, and then we can go inside and have a drink.’

Jerking away from her, he said, ‘Shut the fuck up, you stupid bitch.’

‘Don’t, Dave,’ she implored, still holding his arm. ‘I know you’re upset, but there’s no need to take it out on me. I love you.’

‘If you don’t get your fucking hands off me right now,’ he snarled, glaring down at her. ‘I’ll knock you out. Now fucking
move
!’

‘Oi, pack it in,’ one of the PCs called out, walking towards them. ‘We know you’ve lost your dad, but there’s no need for that kind of behaviour.’

‘Well, get the fuck out of here, and I’ll be fine,’ Dave said through gritted teeth.

‘We don’t need your permission to search the property,’ Ann informed him, a small smirk of triumph on her face. ‘We’ve already got the permission of the owner.’

‘If you’re referring to my dad, he’s dead,’ Dave reminded her. ‘So
I
’m the owner now.’

‘We won’t know that until we see it in writing,’ Ann came back at him smoothly. ‘Until then, we’ve had all the permission we need.’

‘I’d think about that if I was you,’ Dave growled. ‘Because I won’t drop this; I’ll take legal action and make you prove that my dead dad gave you that permission. And you won’t be able to prove it, as you well know, so whatever you find won’t be admissible as evidence. And you don’t want to risk me getting away with whatever you think I’ve done, now, do you?’

Keeping her cool, even though she knew that he was right, Ann said, ‘Fine. So we’ll stay right here and ring through to the station and get them to apply for an emergency warrant.’

‘No need,’ Jay said, looking Dave square in the eye. ‘We have cause to suspect that a child may be being held here against her will, and that gives us the authority to search without a warrant. Which is exactly what I intend to do – with or without your co-operation.’

Glancing at the four uniformed coppers, Dave knew that he wouldn’t be able to take them all on at once. But he couldn’t just stand here and let them search the shed, because they would definitely find what they were looking for. And the chances were that the girl was dead by now, so he’d be up for murder as well as kidnapping and false imprisonment. He had to run, and run
far
. But for that he needed his passport and money, both of which were in the house.

In the box with his gun.

Knowing exactly what he had to do, Dave pulled the knife he’d retrieved from under the hedge out of his pocket and, slinging an arm around Sue’s neck, pressed the tip of the blade into her throat.

‘You’d all best fuck off,’ he barked, walking Sue backwards down the path. ‘And I mean it, so don’t try anything funny or she’ll cop for it.’

Holding her hand up to stop the PCs from doing anything, Jay said, ‘Let her go, Mr Miller. This is just silly.’

‘
Silly?
’ he repeated, sneering nastily as he reached the side door. ‘You’re not at fucking boarding school now, love. This ain’t
silly
, it’s deadly fucking serious. You’re trespassing on my land, and I’m taking a hostage to make sure you leave. Got it?’

Holding the knife flush across Sue’s throat now, to make sure she didn’t try and make a run for it when he took his arm off her neck, Dave took his house keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door. Dragging her inside, he shoved her through the porch and into the kitchen. Relocking the door, he slid all the bolts into place and ordered her up to the bedroom.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Sue gasped, stumbling on the stairs because her legs were shaking so badly. ‘They only want to have a quick look in the shed. They don’t really think Nicky’s in there. It’s more for Connor’s sake than theirs.’

‘You are one fucking stupid bitch,’ Dave spat, unlocking his bedroom door and pushing her inside.

‘I can’t believe you’re being like this,’ she said tearfully, bouncing as she landed heavily on the bed. ‘You were so lovely earlier. What have I done to make you so mad?’

‘You think I was lovely, do you?’ Dave sneered. ‘Well, you’re even more stupid than I thought, then, aren’t you?’ Never taking his eyes off her, he reached to the back of the wardrobe and pulled out a metal box. Unlocking it, he took out the gun he needed.

Sue’s breath caught in her throat. ‘What are you going to do with that?’ she gasped.

‘What do you think?’ Dave shot back, checking to make sure that the clip was full.

‘You’re not going to kill me, are you?’

‘Eventually,’ Dave said coldly, going to the window and peering out to see what the police were doing. It was too dark to make out anything more than silhouettes, but he was pretty sure that they were all still up at this end of the garden. No doubt they’d have called for armed back-up by now, but he planned to be long gone by the time it arrived.

Taking a deep breath, Sue yelled, ‘
HE’S GOT A GUN!
’

‘Stupid
bitch
!’ Dave snarled, turning and whacking her across the face with the weapon’s barrel.

Sobbing, she held a hand to her wounded cheek, feeling faint when blood oozed out from between her fingers.

‘Get back downstairs,’ Dave ordered, pointing the gun at her head now.

Barely able to stand because her legs felt like jelly, Sue forced her body to move. Losing her footing on the last few steps, she tumbled down and landed on her knees at the bottom. Hauling her roughly up by the back of her jacket, Dave threw her into the living room.

Keeping the light off, he looked out through the nets. He couldn’t see any of the police officers now, and assumed that they had all dived for cover at the mention of the gun. An Armed Response Unit would be on its way by now, and he had to get away before it arrived. But he’d left his car keys in the ignition, and he had no doubt that the pigs would have taken them by now to stop him making a quick getaway. There was plenty of woodland to hide in if he went on foot, but now that they knew he had a gun, they would follow at a distance and keep him in their sights until one of the marksmen could get a clear shot at him. So he had no option but to take them all out before the back-up arrived, and give himself a good head start.

After putting out the urgent request for armed back-up, Jay sent one of the PCs around to the front of the house to keep watch in case Dave tried to escape from that side before they arrived. Telling another to watch the side door, and the third to watch the back of the house with Ann, she picked up a large screwdriver from a heap of tools she’d noticed by the outhouse door. Putting her head down, she made her way up the path towards the shed. If Miller was desperate enough to take his own girlfriend hostage in order to stop them from seeing what was in there, then she wanted to know what it was.

Barely able to see because the moon was blanketed by a thick bank of clouds, Jay felt her way around to the door at one of the ends of the structure. Running her hands up it, she felt the padlocks and realised that she would probably need a much more specialised tool to prise them off. But it was an old shed, so the chances were that the hinges would be less secure.

Feeling her way to the other side of the door, she eased the flat end of the screwdriver between the wood and the metal and wrenched it backwards and forwards in the hopes of splintering the wood and loosening the holding screws.

Pausing after several minutes to wipe her sweaty hands on her trousers, Jay cocked her head when she caught a faint sound coming from inside the shed.

‘Hello . . . ?’ she called, her voice a harsh whisper because she didn’t want to alert Dave Miller to what she was doing. ‘Is somebody in there?’

Pressing her ear against the wood, she listened hard. Hearing the sound again, she was almost sure that it was a human voice, although it was so faint she could barely hear it.

‘Nicky?’ she said, her mouth so close to the wood that she could taste it. ‘Nicky, if that’s you, don’t worry. I’m going to have to get help, but I’ll be back, so just sit tight.’

Dashing back up the path now, she waved the PCs over.

Watching through the nets, Dave saw what was happening and knew that the time had come to take action.

‘Looks like they’ve found your girl,’ he murmured, squatting down and resting the barrel of the gun on the ledge to get as steady an aim as he could.

‘Nicky?’ Sue gasped. ‘How – how do you know?’

‘Because your nosy mate’s just come back from snooping in my shed,’ Dave said, peering through his sights and wishing the figures would stop fading in and out of focus, because he needed to be deadly accurate if he was going to take them all out before they scattered and he could no longer locate them.

‘So she
was
in there,’ Sue croaked. ‘You’ve had her all this time? But why? What’s she ever done to you?’

‘Haven’t you figured it out yet, you thick bitch?’ Dave snarled contemptuously. ‘You know what they say about an eye for an eye. Well, how about a daughter for a daughter?’

‘This is about Terry?’ Sue gasped. ‘Nicky
and
me.’

‘And the penny finally drops,’ Dave sneered. ‘About fucking time!’

‘That’s evil,’ Sue cried, barely able to believe what was happening. ‘What Terry did had nothing to do with me and Nicky.’

‘Maybe not Nicky, but
you
knew what was going on, and you let it happen,’ Dave spat back at her.

‘I thought we’d sorted all that out,’ Sue said plaintively. ‘You know I had no idea. I was just as hurt as you were.
More
so, in fact.’

‘Bullshit!’ Dave hissed. ‘Leanne was only
twelve
when she started babysitting for you, and she was fucking gorgeous even then, so don’t try and tell me the dirty bastard wasn’t already eyeing her up. And women who say they don’t know what’s going on under their noses are liars. You knew all right.’

‘I
didn’t
,’ Sue protested, sliding her hand out and groping around for something heavy to defend herself with when he came at her, which she knew he would. ‘I swear on my kids’ lives, I didn’t.’

‘Like that means anything,’ Dave snorted. ‘You went out and left a six-year-old alone in the house so you could swan off for a dirty fucking weekend. And don’t bother trying to lie to me about that, sweetheart. You might have fooled that lot out there, but
I
know what really happened, ’cos I already had your Nicky by then. So don’t be giving me none of that
swear on my kids’ lives
bullshit, ’cos you don’t give a fucking toss about them.’

‘Yes, I do,’ Sue replied quietly, her fingers settling on the rim of Jack’s heavy glass ashtray. ‘I love them.’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Dave spat, his voice thick with contempt. ‘Or I’ll change my mind about using you as a hostage and kill you right here and fucking now!’

Outside, Jay had just moved into the exact right position in relation to the three PCs she was talking to for Dave to take them out in quick succession.

‘
JAAAY!
’ Ann screamed as the first shots thundered out through the window and Jay slumped to the ground at her feet.

Instinctively shoving Ann aside, one of the male PCs grabbed Jay’s arm and dragged her into the tall grass, just as a second barrage of shots flared out.

But the third burst of bullets sprayed the ceiling and walls of the living room as Sue took an almighty swing at Dave’s head with the ashtray, cutting a deep gash into the flesh behind his ear and knocking him to the floor.

EPILOGUE

‘Are you all right, pet?’ Pauline asked, giving Sue a warm hug.

Nodding, Sue dabbed at her tears with a tissue. ‘It’s just so sad,’ she murmured, gazing at the mound of earth the gravediggers had tossed over the coffin. ‘I keep wondering if it was us being there that stressed him out and pushed him over the edge.’